


Found

by confiscatedretina



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 20:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5430125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confiscatedretina/pseuds/confiscatedretina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She brings refreshments, ignores the dull ache in her corporeal body, and does her best to blend into the pastel pinks of Rose's quarters. All the things a good pearl should do. She doesn't think or speak and time washes over her like the mineral rich waters engineered to create artificial people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Found

**Author's Note:**

  * For [possibilityleft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilityleft/gifts).



> Happy holidays, possibilityleft! I really wanted to touch on the moment when Pearl started to develop her feelings for Rose. I hope it's what you wanted. :)

“So this is your new Pearl?”

Rose giggles but her face is stern. “She's not my Pearl, Sapphire. She's her own Pearl.”

The pearl in question can't see any eyes past Sapphire's thick bangs, but she has a distinct feeling of being scrutinized. It makes her skin prickle.

“Indeed,” Sapphire murmurs under her breath and the pearl has a feeling this Gem knows something she isn't sharing.

They turn away from her, to the pearl's relief, and commence speaking to one another about Gem business that doesn't concern a made thing. She brings refreshments, ignores the dull ache in her corporeal body, and does her best to blend into the pastel pinks of Rose's quarters. All the things a good pearl should do. She doesn't think or speak and time washes over her like the mineral rich waters engineered to create artificial people. It is almost a surprise when she hears Rose's voice bidding her guest farewell.

“Pearl?” the true Gem rests a soft hand on her cheek. “How long have you been standing?”

The pearl blinks. “Twenty-two hours, sixteen minutes, thirty-four seconds.” Saying it aloud, she can't help but now feel the weight of so much time. She realizes that every part of her hurts.

“You can't keep doing this to yourself,” Rose sighs.

An objection tries to form at the back of her mind, something to do with logic and a master's wishes, but is crushed long before she can voice it. “No, Rose. Of course not.”

Rose's brows draw together and a spark of fear jolts through the pearl. She never means to upset her betters like this, but she always manages it somehow. This, doubtless, is the moment where Rose Quartz will finally give up her notions that a made thing can be a person. Rose knows, as does the pearl, that no matter how often she is chided for hurting herself in service to a true Gem, it will keep happening until she is too broken to carry on. She will return to her artificial gem and reform only to repeat this process as she has done for times beyond count.

“Pearl... I can't watch you destroy yourself again. I hope you can forgive me for this.”

Gentle but firm, the fingers against her cheek draw the pearl close until Rose's lips press against the false gem on her brow. She shudders, hands clenching into fists at her sides, no more able to stop Rose than she could have stopped Homeworld's daily rotation. Feeling rushes back into her center, hot tears welling in her eyes. A sob catches in her throat. 

“Pearl?” Rose's voice is uncertain but warm.

“I worked so hard,” she swallows thickly. “So hard not to feel...”

Strong arms wrap around her, pulling her close. The memories and specifics of a long life are cracked, damaged with the blow that had put her gem into a refuse heap, but the feelings remain. Anger at the revelation of being a false Gem, despair at her impending life of servitude, fear over an inability to be satisfactory, sadness as she was passed from one Gem to another, growing ever more obsolete with each passing decade. It had become necessary to push away the instinctive personhood she could not have and make a machine of herself. When that agonizing, self-shattering blow had finally come, it had been a mercy to wrap herself around corruption and its promise of oblivion.

Then, suddenly, there was Rose Quartz. Rose whose touch had healed her cracked gem, who insisted on treating her like a real person, speaking to her as if she were a proper Gem, gently scolding her for dressing in Quartz pinks instead of her own natural colors (whatever they might be). Despite the comments of her compatriots, Rose had always insisted that “Pearl” wasn't her property. 

“It hurts,” the pearl whispers. “I hurt.”

“Sometimes healing is painful,” Rose murmurs into her hair. “You'll feel better soon.”

“Will I? I'm not even a person...”

“Hush,” there's a sternness in the Gem's voice. “You are a person, Pearl. A wonderful person.”

“But-”

“It doesn't matter that you weren't made the same way other Gems are. You're still a Gem!”

She squeezes the pearl...no, Pearl, like a true Gem name... She squeezes Pearl a bit too hard and the smaller Gem grunts in discomfort, not quite a protest. It's something.

“Sorry!” Rose lets go immediately, then looks down at Pearl still folded in her arms. “Was that...did you just make a pain sound? You've never done that before.”

Pearl sniffles then flinches at her own admission: “I have been standing for a long time.”

“I think it's time you reformed. I'll help you take care of yourself then, alright?”

“Alright...”

Holding her shoulders, Rose steps back and watches as Pearl's pink-clad shape dissolves in light and vanishes into her gem. It lands in a pair of cupped palms and Pearl can just feel the warmth of Rose's hands. Instead of scanning her surroundings for clues about a potential master's desires, Pearl turns her thoughts inward and begins to reshape herself.

It takes several days before she feels right for the first time in her memory. 

Pearl emerges shyly to a dimly lit, empty room. It's the room Rose set aside just for her on the day they met and which Pearl had avoided, thinking it unseemly for an object to have a room all to itself. But she realizes, at last, that she, Pearl, was never a thing to Rose Quartz. She wipes a stray tear off her cheek and looks down at herself. At the bottom of a pale blue body suit, optimized for comfort, she sees a pair of dancer's slippers in a particular shade of pink.

“Blue really is more your color,” Sapphire says from the doorway, making Pearl jump. “Rose couldn't be here when you came back. She asked me to check on you.”

“Oh,” is all Pearl can think to say. “Should I...get you anything?”

Sapphire chuckles. “Old habits do die hard, don't they? No thank you. I'm leaving, but I wanted you to know: she's going to take you to a place where you'll always be somebody.”

“What?”

“Good-bye, Pearl,” Sapphire curtsies and disappears before the other Gem can sort out her confusion.

“Where I'll always be somebody?” she murmurs to herself.

The thought is frightening and Pearl tucks it away to examine later. Aimless and uncertain, she walks into Rose's dimmed quarters. A note left on a side table tells Pearl to make herself at home, whatever that might mean. Wary, she sits on a comfortable couch by a window and looks at her reflection against the night sky. Her hair is still a little pink. Not the matching shade it had been before, but just enough to remind her of Rose. Pearl smiles, an almost alien expression, and decides that this, too, feels right.

She watches the stars and waits for Rose to come home.


End file.
